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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

Here are a few sample curricula used for these kinds of classes in other states, to give an idea of what's commonly taught:

TX: https://www.dallasfed.org/educate/pfl.aspx

MS (PDF): https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed...

VA (PDF): https://p19cdn4static.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Serv...

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Following your links, I'm seeing topics like "differentiate between needs and wants" and "what are taxes for." Perhaps these classes are helpful to those with a room-temperature IQ, but I think that for college-bound students, they're a waste of time.

My High School took the approach of automatically signing everyone up for a personal finance class, but letting anyone take something else if they talked to their counselor. That way students who cared about learning actual academic subjects could do so, but those who were most likely to need a class in personal finance were still sorted into it by default.

Lists of competencies sometimes sound silly if you read them like a table of contents. But they’re not chapter titles or a lesson plan, they’re just lists of what shouldn’t be overlooked. Some of them might just be part of a broader discussion about something else.

Another way to look at it is: if someone can’t do those things, they are not competent in the subject matter.

I think you answered your own question with your anecdote. PF class is indeed targeted.

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